Last week, I attended the HR Florida State Conference in Orlando. It was fantastic!! I wrote two posts about my thoughts and experiences while I was there. Check them out

• 2 Miles from Disney World
• Boulder and Bolder

If there was one “negative” about the experience, it was how many of the concurrent presenters were attorneys and consultants and vendor-types. And so few were current practitioners.

What up wit dat???

I don’t blame the Conference Team. They are great peops and I’m believe they picked the best of the best of the sessions proposed to them. And I enjoyed all the presenters that I was able to see. Kudos to them for putting themselves out there.

I blame current practitioners. Cuz we’re not representing on the HR Conference speaker scene the way we should be.

And I get it … It’s hard out here in these HR streets! Practitioners are busy driving the strategies of our organizations and administering the functions associated with our department. We are coaching and training our staff and others on the laws, policies, procedures and practices associated with our industries and businesses. It isn’t easy to do that kind of stuff all day then try to be creative for other practitioners in your down and off time. Yet alone put together an entertaining, informative 75-90 minute presentation with appropriate, universal talking points.

In the words of my beloved Sweet Brown, “ain’t nobody got time for that!!”

I’ve done some speaking this year at local events and I was a concurrent speaker at the Louisiana SHRM Conference earlier this year. I’ll finish my HR conference appearances for 2013 next month as a speaker at the North Carolina SHRM Conference in Winston-Salem … I sincerely considered making this conference my last speaking engagement for a good, long while. Everything in my introverted soul hates being up there talking to people!! And attendees can be brutal with their anonymous “feedback”. It’s demanding and exhausting and, with all my other demands and commitments, I just wasn’t sure I could keep going.

Thanks to my experience at HR Florida this year, I not only want to keep going — but I have to keep going.

Because these HR Conferences and the attendees need to hear the voice of practitioners in more than just the audience!! Maybe not in every session but certainly more than what we’re currently seeing.

It’s time to take it to the next level, HR!! Will you join me??